FIRE THIS TIME

by Gary Lark

AI-generated graphic by Shutterstock for The New Verse News.

This time 
this time
like any other time
like no other time
our time.

Now I understand,
we’re disposable.
After a long life,
tasting the wind 
from all directions
I get it.

Fires in Europe,
Canadian forests ablaze,
drought and floods,
we reach into the night
asking consciousness to save us.
The great beast of us
wheels and turns
desire in every hand.

Exploit and plunder marches on.
We could have,
we should have done something yesterday.
I know, I know
it will be different this time.

If I were a giant, I might pick up Congress
and shake it until the rats fall out
but I wouldn’t mess 
with the janitors and secretaries.

I go to the river in the evening
to watch it flow through town.
I don’t want to drink it
but I do.

Gary Lark’s most recent collections are “Coming Down the Mountain,” “Easter Creek,” and “Daybreak on the Water,” His work has appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Catamaran, and Rattle. Gary and his wife Dorothy live in Oregon's Rogue Valley.

FOOTBALL GODS ABOUND

by Gary Lark

The Supreme Court said Monday that a Washington state school district violated the First Amendment rights of a high school football coach when he lost his job after praying at the 50-yard line after games. "The Constitution and the best of our traditions counsel mutual respect and tolerance, not censorship and suppression, for religious and nonreligious views alike," Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in the majority opinion.

After the thunder and dash
we have the coach
and his batch of Evangelicals
kneeling at the fifty yard line.

The Wiccan folks are on one twenty
and Muslims on the other.

Down by the east goalposts
there's an Indigenous circle
seeking guidance with peyote.

Over to the west Jains
are trying to avoid the ants.

Sikhs and Jews are having a debate
about the shape of the field.

Eleven Buddhists are chanting
on the east thirty,
Hindus claim the west.

On the track three Mothers
Against Drunk Driving
have given up and are passing a bottle.

The Eckankar crowd are setting up
near the concession stand.

The Crips and the Bloods
are sharing a joint with Spinoza
in the bleachers.

There's a street preacher
practicing his quick draw
when the lights go out.


Gary Lark’s most recent collections are Easter Creek (Main Street Rag), Daybreak on the Water (Flowstone Press), and Ordinary Gravity (Airlie Press). His work has appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Catamaran, Rattle, Sky Island, and others.

COVID-19

by Gary Lark

Here we are
waiting for the world to end.
Enough stuff to last a month
and angst hanging outside
waiting to gobble us up.

I go out back
to the garden
plant spring seeds
in an eight-year plot
and collect some vitamin D
for the long haul.

Sheltering in place,
seeing even less people
than I usually do.
A neighbor turns out her little dog,
we wave. I check the rat traps,
some of the bait is gone.
They lose a few every day.

Gary Lark’s work includes Ordinary Gravity (Airlie Press); River of Solace (Editor's Choice Chapbook Award from Turtle Island Quarterly); In the House of Memory (BatCat Press); Without a Map (Wellstone Press); Getting By (Holland Prize from Logan House Press). Daybreak on the Water is forthcoming from Flowstone Press. His poetry has appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Catamaran, Hubbub, Poet Lore, ZYZZYVA, and others.